As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marta Duic writes, having fresh, quality and home-made bakery products at your fingertips and available 24 hours a day is the basic idea behind the innovative Croatian Panissimo project whicb involves setting up ”bread stations” in the form of vending machines. They were initially set up last month in Pazin, Istria.
The Croatian Panissimo project is a business idea from a company named Reginex, an Istrian manufacturer and distributor of bakery products, which will offer its products through vending machines throughout the Istrian peninsula.
As Paolo Rados, the manager of the Croatian Panissimo project, pointed out, in their bread stations, or rather their bread vending machines, there are only daily fresh bakery products, the devices are filled up with them in the morning, and then they’re replenished once again in the afternoon. All of the bread that is not sold that day is replaced with fresh items.
“We came up with the idea with the desire to simplify and speed up the experience of buying fresh bread, which is more or less an everyday food, and to ensure the availability of daily fresh homemade bread and bakery products throughout Istria. The reactions from the market have been excellent, our customers have accepted this way of buying bakery products because they have realised that it’s faster, closer and always fresh for them,” explained Rados.
The Pazin-based company Reginex has otherwise been engaged in baking since way back in 1990 and can boast that they’re the only producer in all of Istria that produces their own natural yeasts and that uses the process of delayed fermentation in the production. They sell their products throughout Istria through their own retail stores, supermarket chains and local stores, as well as through their new Panissimo bread stations.
In addition, Reginex is a representative of several leading global manufacturers of bakery and confectionery equipment, and offers its equipment, engineering and service throughout Croatia and the wider region. It currently has 55 permanent employees, and that number increases by 10 to 15 additional seasonal workers during the summer months.
“There are six types of bread in the vending machines, croissants, donuts and strudels, and the best-selling products are our homemade bread, bobuli and croissants. We’re definitely planning to expand and in the short term we plan to install bread machines in the areas of Pula, Porec, Rovinj and in the surrounding locations.
With our bread stations, we want to offer bread which is always available for the inhabitants of scattered villages and municipalities in the interior of Istria, where some of them do not even have a local store and have to travel to a neighbouring area to purchase even the most basic of groceries,” stated Rados.
Although vending machines are known for offering coffee and other beverages, snacks and milk, the Croatian Panissimo project is the first such device specialising in fresh baked products. Since they’ve been engaged in engineering and equipment in the bakery for many years now and are representatives of a number of world-famous brands of bakery equipment, Reginex decided to modify those original snack vending machines.
Since the space inside the bread machine is limited in size, for now they have decided to offer their best-selling products whose prices range from five to ten kuna, and Rados announced that the vending machines will be filled according to customer interest after a while, when such trends and habits can be monitored.
“The first Panissimo stations are in Novo Naselje in Pazin and at the Pazin bus station, and they will soon move on, to Porec, Rovinj, Pula and smaller places within the Istrian interior,” said Paolo Rados.
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